After comparatively flat price action in the market yesterday, the past several hours have seen crypto prices spike as institutional adoption continues apace and Meta reportedly makes a surprise NFT-related move.

According to a Financial Times report today citing unnamed sources, Mark Zuckerberg’s ubiquitous social-media company looks to be preparing to barge on into the buzzy non-fungible token sector of crypto.

Meta is said to be preparing a feature that will let users mint and sell NFTs, with Facebook and Instagram users also being able to display their NFT collections on their social media accounts.

Two sources also apparently indicated that a Meta NFT marketplace in the vein of OpenSea is also in the planning stages.

There is still a fair bit of conjecture and rumour about the details surrounding this story, including which blockchain these features might be built on or integrate with, but one thing’s for sure, the market is reacting favourably at the time of writing (see further below).

 

Crypto mining hearing kicks off in Congress

It might pay to also keep an eye on another big development occurring today, and that’s the “Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency: Energy Impacts of Blockchains” hearing occurring in the US Congress.

The scrutiny on this side of the industry, which is an essential component of “proof of work” cryptos including Bitcoin and (for now) Ethereum, is largely coming from the Democratic side of the US political landscape.

The likes of fierce crypto critic Senator Elizabeth Warren and leaders from the House Energy and Commerce Committee are turning up the heat, so to speak, on crypto-mining companies to prove or explain what value they provide in the face of high energy consumption.

Brian Brooks, CEO of crypto-mining company Bitfury, who is speaking at the hearing, published some notes ahead of the meeting.

“It’s not up to the government to decide if Bitcoin is important to the country’s future — that’s the market,” said Brooks, who also served as the Comptroller of the Currency in the Trump administration. “The market has spoken.”

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap up about 3.5% over the past 24 hours, here’s the state of play in the top 10 by market cap at the time of writing – according to CoinGecko data.

As you can see from the chart, Bitcoin (BTC) and the rest of the tokens in the layer 1 blockchain-populated top 10 are all faring pretty well on a daily timeframe right now with no particular surging standouts.

Cardano (ADA), however, has moved the least, although it had been doing its own thing earlier in the week, pumping on the promise of its DeFi ecosystem enablement and expansion through the decentralised platform known as SundaeSwap.

 

Winners and losers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$22.1 billion to about US$1.1 billion in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

• Cosmos (ATOM), (mc: US$11.8b) +12%

• Kadena (KDA), (mc: US$1.34b) +12%

• Osmosis (OSMO), (mc: US$2.87b) +9%

• Crypto.com (CRO), (mc: US$11.9b) +8.7%

• Sushi (SUSHI), (mc: US$1.26b) +8.6%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Secret (SCRT), (mc: US$1.42b) -5%

• Pocket Network (POKT), (mc: US$1.3b) -4.6%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$3.76b) -4%

• Monero (XMR), (market cap: US$1.2b) -1%

• Huobi Token (HT), (mc: US$1.55b) -0.5%

 

Lower-cap winners and losers

Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…

DAILY PUMPERS

• DEAPcoin (DEP), (market cap: US$242m) +70%

• Router Protocol (ROUTE), (mc: US$78.5m) +38%

• Universe.xyz (XYZ), (mc: US$70m) +37%

• Paint Swap (BRUSH), (mc: US$33m) +30%

• Maple Finance (MPL), (mc: US$45m) +18%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Aquarius (AQUA), (market cap: US$27m) -25%

• Cardstarter (CARDS), (market cap: US$48m) -16%

• Cream (CREAM), (mc: US$40m) -14%

• Scream (SCREAM), (mc: US$19.5m) -13.8%

• Propy (PRO), (mc: US$186m) -13.5%

 

Final words… 

A couple of things to end on. Let’s go with the bad news first…

Russia’s central bank is looking to pull a China and propose a “blanket ban” on cryptocurrency circulation and usage, including crypto mining.

 

But let’s end with something more positive. During an interview yesterday, Walt Bettinger, CEO of Texas-based financial services giant Charles Schwab, said that “crypto is hard to ignore” and his firm would “welcome the chance” to offer the trading of the asset class in a regulatory favourable environment.

 

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